working towards perfection (and failing)

Tag: stupid theories

Have you ever had an amazingly profound experience, one which blows your mind? You’re just casually reading something online and suddenly your head says, ‘yep, I know that’s true!’ and tears form at the corners of your eyes?

I had that experience one night this week. I suppose it must be what religious people experience when they finally find God, or some other higher being. It’s a very powerful, incredibly intense feeling whereby your mind is sensationally blown.

At the time I was reading theories about different views on the universe and our place within it. There were two which I felt at ease with, as if I knew all along that it was true in much the same way my Baby Brother’s sexual preferences were something I always knew.

Firstly, we’re just a game. We’re simply Sims following the Fate of whatever our creator has in store for us. ‘God’ – or whomever we believe in {or not} – is just someone playing us on a computer screen. It explains my personal understanding of Fate and its relationship with Free Will, it gives a reason for those little glitches we all experience and an excuse for all those times things which don’t go as planned, the curveballs life throws at us. It also recognises that religious folk may be correct in their belief that there is a god – of some kind – who is all-knowing and all-powerful.

Secondly, and more interestingly for me, is the theory of ‘phenomenalism’. This is the idea that there is no existence without perception, the belief that objects only exist as a phenomenon of consciousness. When you are not aware of something, or interacting with it, it disappears. Poof! Gone. It only exists again when you interact with it again, in whatever form that may take.

And thirdly, what if we’re just brains in a jar. Or, I’m the brain in the jar and I’m ‘dreaming’ this life of mine. None of you reading this exist in reality; you’re all just figments of my overactive imagination playing a role of my choosing.

Maybe it’s a combination of all three, and possibly more. Perhaps I think too much and there is no Truth about our place within the universe. Perhaps I’ll wake up tomorrow.